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Qo'noS
"Only Qo'noS endures". :- Klingon death chant ( ) Qo'noS (transliterated to Kronos in English) was a planet in the Klingon system, homeworld of the warp capable Klingon species, and the capital of the Klingon Empire. Astronomical data ]] Using the Vulcan star charts, Qo'noS was first visited by Humans in 2151. It was about four days away from Sol at warp 4.5. ( ) The coordinates of the planet were 43.89.26.05. ( ) Further information Historical ]] :Main article: Klingon history As the homeworld of the Klingons and the capital world of the Klingon Empire, Qo'noS housed the Klingon High Council and other important institutions. Qo'noS had achieved interstellar travel capability around the time of Kahless in the 9th century. Warp capability was achieved some time after 1947 and warp 6 had been achieved some time before 2152. ( ; ; ; ) , Data gave the exact date of Kahless' death as 1547 years ago (from 2369), or 822 AD. http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/249.txt From , we know that the Earth calendar year of 2373 coincided with the year of Kahless 999. Assuming that the Klingon calculation of time starts with Kahless' death, one orbital period of Qo'noS would equal 567 Terran days. Qo'noS' orbit would be longer if the calendar were calculated from Kahless' birth.}} In 2293, the Klingon moon of Praxis, a key energy-production facility for the Klingon Empire, exploded after an accident involving over-mining which sent out a subspace shock wave, causing severe damage to the planet's ozone layer. This event forced planning for the evacuation of the planet and led to the signing of the First Khitomer Accord with the Federation. ( ) Qo'noS joined the Federation at some point between 2327 and 2365. ( ) The Treaty of Alliance was signed by both parties. ( ) and , there was only a political alliance, a peace treaty and good relations between the two powers.}} Geographical One region on Qo'nos was the Ketha lowlands, which were dominated by agricultural usage and was the birthplace of Chancellor Martok. ( ) Topography *Caves of No'Mat *Hamar Mountains *Sea of Gatan *Kang's Summit *Kri'stak volcano *Lake of Lusor *Skral River Regions *Central Plains Area *Ketha Province **Ketha lowlands *Mekro'vak region Cities *First City (capital) ** Great Hall ** Klingon nightclub ** Old Quarter *Qam-Chee *Quin'lat *Tong Vey Landmarks * Great Domes of Qo'noS Zoological *Glob fly *Goat *Grint hound *Grishnar cat *Jackal mastiff *Lingta *Monster dog *Octopus *Kolar beast *Pipius *Saber bear *Serpent worm *Sark *Targ Appendices Appearances * ** ** (holographic) ** * ''Star Trek'' films: ** ** * ** ** ** * ** Background information During development of the aborted TV series Star Trek: Phase II, John Meredyth Lucas wrote a two-parter, called "Kitumba", which would have featured the Klingon homeworld. The planet was described as being only marginally larger than Earth. Because of the Klingons' belief in their invincibility, the planet would have had no defense systems. The Klingon warlord, who presided over political and military decisions, resided here. (Star Trek: Phase II - The Making of the Lost Series) The Klingon homeworld first appeared in . Both “Our Brother’s Keeper” by Beth Woods and "Brother to Dragons" by Drew Deighan, scripts which inspired "Sins of the Father", included the Klingon homeworld; "Brother to Dragons" was partly set on the planet and "Our Brother's Keeper" referenced it. ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) Writer Ronald D. Moore was pleased to be asked to script "Sins of the Father" precisely because it was to be the first to show the planet. ( , p. 58) At the outset of writing "Sins of the Father", Ron Moore provided Co-Executive Producer Michael Piller with an explanatory two-page memo about the Klingons which included the statement, "The Klingon homeworld is a world of extremes. The tilt of the planet's axis results in wild seasonal changes and there is a great deal of volcanic activity. There's a single land mass and an enormous, turbulent ocean. The race we know as Klingon was born on this harsh and brutal planet." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) The final-draft script for "Sins of the Father" echoes some of those ideas, stating, "The planet has a single large land mass, and the world is dominated by a vast ocean. The tilt of the planet's axis has created wild seasonal changes and the atmosphere should appear turbulent and showing extremes of both warm and frigid weather on the planet." http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/165.txt Upon establishing Qo'noS in "Sins of the Father", the creative team opted to give the Klingon homeworld a murky green sky and make the planet, as seen from space, appear primarily green. By way of explanation, Visual Effects Producer Dan Curry stated, "I guess was my homage to ''Forbidden Planet, which had a green atmosphere, and we just felt that there would be a degree of noxiousness on the Klingon homeworld." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) For "Sins of the Father", Syd Dutton of Illusion Arts was assigned to create a matte painting of the Great Hall and surrounding First City. (Star Trek Encyclopedia'' 1st ed., p. 118) When Dutton and Dan Curry were planning this painting, Curry took inspiration from personal experience of having spent much of his youth in Asia, primarily Thailand, Laos and Nepal. Said Curry, "I wanted the Klingon architecture to kind of be an amalgam of those architectural styles .... Syd immediately got what I was talking about and Syd's first sketch became the final sketch, and Syd would do a sketch on brown wrapping paper in oils and then ... I'd talk to Producer Rick Berman and Co-Producer Peter Lauritson about it and they would go with it, so we went ahead with the final version." The illustration was ultimately still an oil painting, though painted on Masonite, and measured about four feet wide. Purposefully making the painting very wide enabled focus on different portions of the illustration to represent different parts of the city. The matte painting of Qo'noS designed for "Sins of the Father" had some additional elements composited together with it, such as rear-projected footage of people walking around between columns in the exterior of the Great Hall. The painting was also to show the First City amid a lightening storm. "The lightening was composited on an optical printer, not a digital composite," clarified Dan Curry. "Syd Dutton would then paint different angles of light for the reflections, so it wasn't just a flash frame but you felt that the lightening was directional." The painting was composited by Dutton's partner at Illusion Arts, Bill Taylor. ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) The interior design of the Klingon Great Hall and other sets in "Sins of the Father" earned Production Designer Richard James and Set Decorator James Mees the Emmy Award for Best Art Direction. Upon viewing the episode many years after having written it, Ron Moore noticed the extensiveness of the sets for the Klingon homeworld. "I was struck by how many sets we had," he related, "and this was one of the bigger pieces we did on the show, because we didn't normally have this many sets on an alien world." Multiple sets and set pieces used to represent Qo'noS were reused from previous Star Trek productions. Ron Moore commented, "We didn't build anything for 'Sins' by itself, I don't think." Circular arches on the planet were first made for TNG: , in which they were encompassed in the interior of the cryosatellite featured in that episode. A street in the First City was made from pre-existing set pieces which were integrated especially for "Sins of the Father". Even the Great Hall was substantially redressed from having been used as the space station science lab in . ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) The script of specifies that, in that episode, a visual effect of the Klingon homeworld was to represent the planet during one of its days. The document also details the view of the planet thus; "The gothic towers of the Klingon High Council Chamber rise above the smoggy yellow haze of the teeming capital city." http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/ent001.txt Dan Curry recalled, "My immediate reaction the script was, 'Let's contact Syd Dutton at Illusion Arts. " ("NX-01 File 02", ENT Season 1 special features) Hence, Illusion Arts went on to create the episode's matte painting of the Klingon capital. ( , p. 30) Continued Curry, "We looked at reference photographs and we found a photograph of some place in Morocco or North Africa that was in Syd's library and we loosely based the terrain on it." Since Dutton was very busy at the time, however, he brought in another matte painter, Bobby Scifo, who did the shot of Qo'noS that was finally used for "Broken Bow". It was decided that this representation of the Klingon homeworld would feature a large canyon. "Some of the staff at Illusion Arts, I think it was John Wong, built a very rough, large-scale model, maybe ten feet across, of this canyon with Klingons in it," explained Curry. The miniature allowed the team to view the buildings from different perspectives, knowledge which they then used to decide how the final shot would look, incorporating the same buildings from the model. ("NX-01 File 02", ENT Season 1 special features) According to Star Trek: Star Charts (pp. 55, 56, 61 & 62), the capital city for the uniglobal government and for the Klingon Empire was the First City on Qo'noS. The dominant species on the planet were the Klingons. Points of interest on this world were the Great Hall, Qam-Chee, Tong Vey, Quin'lat, Temple of G'boj, Kri'stak volcano, Lake of Lusor, and Caves of Kahless. The Klingons were warp capable in 930 A.D. The planet was on the front line during the brief Klingon Civil War of 2368. In 2378, there were 3.84 billion Klingons living on the planet. The planet was located in the Qo'noS system. The star system was located in the Qo'noS Sector, adjacent to the Archanis Sector. The star Qo'noS was a K-class star with a magnitude of +3, which was ten times brighter than Sol. In 2293, the visited this system when escorting Kronos One to Earth. One theory (relayed by Richard Arnold but effectively disproved in the Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter and ) held that alternate hemispheres of the Klingon homeworld were responsible for the differences between Klingons with cranial ridges and those without. ( , p. 12) Since a range of white and African-American performers played Klingons on Star Trek: The Next Generation, different hemispheres of the planet were indeed given associations for the contrasts in the make-up. Make-Up Supervisor Michael Westmore explained, "We settled on this strategy: all the natural brown-toned actors were Northern Klingons .... All the fair-skinned actors were Southern Klingons." (Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts, p. 68) Qo'noS in the alternate reality For the planet's appearance in , the filmmakers were inspired by , the city abandoned due to the Chernobyl disaster that inspired Praxis in The Undiscovered Country. Roberto Orci commented about the planet, "Maybe its civilization was built on top of the old version of the Klingon civilization, so Scott Chambliss did an amazing job of putting the new on top of, sort of, ruins of a city that may have gone through a Praxis-like event." http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=37615 Chambliss himself explained, "At first, Qo'noS was going to be a super-industrialized place, where the off-product of their industry was so toxic, they basically turned the planet itself into an utter waste zone. In doing that, they altered the environment so much it became a non-stop storming planet. There was only lightning, storm, and crazy wind in the sky. You couldn't even walk the surface of the planet, because it was all oceans of toxicity. They had burrowed down into the planet, as well as built their city on top. They kept building higher and higher because the meth level got higher and higher." The concept of the highly polluted Klingon homeworld went on to influence the design of the place. "When it came down to dealing with it," recalled Scott Chambliss, "the battle sequence wasn't fully fleshed out in the beginning, which is normal .... Ultimately, that took us to a place of trying all different kinds of environmental pieces of this overall picture of toxified Qo'noS .... I think I did 14 different versions of the set. Each one had a different specificity of what it was, and why it was the way it was. Nothing really landed with J.J. [Abrams.] It finally got to the point where I needed to do something a lot more abstract." Chambliss also remarked that the area of Qo'noS featured in the battle sequence was "probably a factory" and possibly had been "a munitions factory" or "a place for building space craft." ( , p. 67) Scott Chambliss took classical influence for the columns in this region. "The quadrant of the city where the action takes place is sort of an interpretation of the Roman , the warrens below the Colosseum floor," he said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/11/star-trek-into-darkness-insiders-guide The idea of designing the set in an extremely abstract way led Scott Chambliss to propose a particular feature of the site, which he described as a "big, glowing, lensy thing in the background, the big halo." This element was based on the sculptural installation . "That was the thing I kept staring at, and seeing the scale of a human being in front of it," he reflected, "and thought, 'This is so cool. Maybe this is a way into what we're doing, playing with a massive sunburst or light source, or whatever the hell it was going to be, against our villain, who is supposed to be the baddest guy on Earth.' But the epic scale of that glow even makes this huge bad guy look tiny. " ( , p. 67) Following the set's construction, the rest of the planet was fleshed out. At Pixomondo, the look of the world was designed by CG Supervisor Enrico Damm and Compositing Supervisor Dan Cobbett. Remembered Pixomondo Visual Effects Supervisor Ben Grossmann, "The way J.J. turned it over to us was as a moody and atmospheric environment .... For the larger planet and the flying through it, we tried to take as many design cues from the partial, destroyed set that was there as far as textures and design angles, and extrapolate from that what a city, planet and building would look like.” These aspects became a combination of industrial areas and ten-mile-high building spires existing in the dense, polluted air. Pixomondo also developed a toxic atmosphere from which the ships could appear. Grossmann added, “''We took reference from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and from really tall and spire-y buildings .... What I liked was when you see pictures photographed from up there, the buildings are so tall that they peek through the clouds and you have no real sense of how far you are away from the ground. That gave us the idea to build the planet Kronos in atmospheric layers. We tried to imagine what a planet like Jupiter would be like underneath all these layers of atmosphere." The upper levels of Qo'noS were based on thinking that, in the upper atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet, there might be occasional clarity amongst the thick clouds. “''As we start to descend down through the atmosphere," stated Ben Grossman, "we had the idea to almost give it an underwater feel. We figured that with that much humidity and moisture to create a toxic cloud, you’d imagine there’s a lot of toxic sludge around. We ran a bunch of waterfall simulations and we allowed pretty high amounts of accumulated condensation to create these toxic waterfalls.” Even lower on the planet surface, the lighting shifted to seem akin to an underwater cave, with shafts of light scattering in the atmosphere and illuminating the environment. “''We realized the most effective way to nail this look and make it feel real was by rendering as much as possible the volumes of atmosphere all in one,” Ben Grossmann recounted. “''Normally you just render lighting passes and let the compers dial in the balance .... But when you’re shooting everything through a really heavy atmosphere, that technique doesn’t work anymore. So what you have to do is render the effects volumes properly lit from within and calculating the qualities of the light as they move through varying densities of atmosphere. Needless to say that was quite a render hog but gave us the look we were going for in the end.” The fluid simulations were done in Naiad, whereas volumetric effects – such as atmospheric swirls from wing tips – were rendered in FumeFX. Ben Grossmann concluded, “''To help give a sense of scale to these volumes we ran blowing air debris and bits of ash and detritus as fluid sims rendered out with Thinking Particles. And we used Krakatoa too .... Buildings were rendered in V-Ray.” Minor CGI was involved even in the area used for the battle sequence, such as tattered pieces of fabric which were included as ground elements and were created as cloth sims. http://www.fxguide.com/featured/star-trek-into-darkness-vfx-makes-it-so/ The name of the homeworld It took a long time before the Klingon homeworld received a definitive name on-screen. Ron Moore later remembered, "''There was a matter of great debate, within the TNG staff, about naming the Klingon homeworld. It was one of these tedious discussions that went on ''ad nauseum, far beyond its actual importance, because writers would just sort of name the Klingon homeworld and then everyone would hate it .... Memos flew around about this, and we'd sit and we would write all these Klingon names ... to try and come up with something that sounded decent and interesting and strong, for their homeworld." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) During the making of "Sins of the Father", linguist Marc Okrand was invited to name the planet. "''The Homeworld was a big deal," Okrand recalled. "I actually came up with about six names, some sounded good, some actually meant something. Paramount gave them to Gene Roddenberry and he picked his favorite. I had no further connection with it until I saw the episode and all they said was 'we're going to the Homeworld. " ( , p. 58) Indeed, the writing staff went through a period, between considering names, in which they planned to refer to the planet merely as "the homeworld." Commented Ron Moore, "Then that got awkward, 'cos you were constantly saying, 'on the homeworld,' and, 'Where's the homeworld?' and 'Set course for the homeworld.' And so we started trying to come up with a name." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) Several names for the planet have been established on screen and in reference works. For example, the Star Trek: Phase II episode "Kitumba" referred to the Klingon homeworld as "Ultar". (Star Trek: Phase II - The Making of the Lost Series) According to Ron Moore, Marc Okrand suggested naming the planet either "tlhIngan" (the unofficial Klingonese name for the Klingon species) or something similar, which Moore considered "almost unpronounceable." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) * Kronos: The Klingon homeworld remained canonically unnamed until , in which it was identified as "Kronos", spelled that way in the film's script. http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/tuc.txt It was Marc Okrand who originally contributed this name, though he took a long while to come up with it. The writing staff of TNG were reluctant to adopt the moniker. Ron Moore stated, "Rick Berman or Michael Piller or somebody didn't want to use it in the show, like that name was not to be used, and we were just gonna call it the homeworld .... Eventually, I think, it came back around to Kronos, to the point where everyone had forgotten why they objected to it in the first place." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) The spelling "Kronos" was also used in most of the scripts of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/575.txt It was also used in the script of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode . http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/ent001.txt According to the pronunciation guide in the script of , KRO-nos is the phonetic spelling of "Kronos". http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/550.txt The spelling "Kronos" was first seen on-screen in . * Qo'noS: According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia and Marc Okrand's reference book The Klingon Dictionary, "Kronos" is the pronunciation and anglicanized form of the Klingonese word "Qo'noS". According to the script of "Tears of the Prophets", however, where a Klingonese transcription of the Klingon death chant refers to "Kronos" twice, "Kronos" is the way the name is spelled in Klingonese as well. http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/550.txt The alternate spelling QO'NOS was sometimes used instead of KRONOS in closed-captioning, in the official DVD releases of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes for example. On screen, the first time the spelling "QO'NOS" appeared was in Star Trek Into Darkness, displayed on the viewscreen of the Enterprise when Sulu sent a message to John Harrison. http://www.jorgeonline.me/portfolio/star-trek-into-darkness-2/ The spelling Qo'noS was also exclusively used in the [[Star Trek Into Darkness (novel)|novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness]]. * Chronos: "Chronos" was a more rare alternative spelling, used in the scripts of only two Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. These were http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/557.txt and http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/573.txt. * Kling: During the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, an earlier alternate name for the Klingon homeworld was also used. "Kling" was first mentioned on-screen in TNG: and depicted as a location on "The Explored Galaxy" star chart. At the time "Heart of Glory" was written, "Kling" was in fact intended as the name of the Klingon homeworld, but once the episode was filmed, it was realized that the name sounded pretty silly. (Star Trek Encyclopedia) Despite this, either “Our Brother’s Keeper” or "Brother to Dragons" reused the name, with the other script using a similar alternative. Ron Moore noted, "I think one just called it 'Kling,' which felt bad, and the other called it 'Klinga,' which was even worse." ("Sins of the Father" audio commentary, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray) In the Star Trek Encyclopedia, "Kling" was referenced as a district or a city on the Klingon homeworld, apparently due to the name having been deemed silly following the making of "Heart of Glory". In the audio commentary for "Sins of the Father", Encyclopedia co-writer Denise Okuda tells Ron Moore, "I'm glad you got away from 'Kling, " and proceeds to mock the name with him. According to Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 56), "Kling" is an alternative name for the homeworld, in common with "Kronos" and "Qo'noS". * Klingonii, Klinzhai, Kazh: Reference works that predate Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country have offered several other names. According to the Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (released in ), the Klingon homeworld was the planet "Klingonii", also known as "Epsilon Sagittarii B". According to Star Trek Maps Chart B (released in ), the homeworld was the planet "Kazh" and the star it orbited was called "Klingon". In the reference book The Worlds of the Federation (pp. 114 & 154), the homeworld was called both "Klinzhai" and "Kling". The name "Klinzhai" first appeared in the novel The Final Reflection. "Kling" and "Klinzhai" have also been used in the FASA RPG and various other novels, as well as in the Star Trek: Starfleet Command video game series, before the release of Star Trek VI. Location of Qo'noS and the Empire On screen and in dialogue, the Klingons have been exclusively identified as an Alpha Quadrant race. The association with the Alpha Quadrant began to be established in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In , the Klingons and the Romulans were mentioned to have had a series of skirmishes along their border. In , K'Ehleyr stated that Klingon wars were rarely confined to the Empire. These wars had a tendency to spread to the neighboring star systems, like those of the Tholians and the Ferengi. All three were later established to be Alpha Quadrant powers, in such episodes as and . A star chart in established Ferenginar as being only a few sectors away from Cardassia. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes confirmed what had been already stated and added onto it. In , the Dominion identified the Klingons as a threat originating from the Alpha Quadrant. was the first episode that implied that the Klingons and the Cardassians shared a border. The Klingon Empire launched an attack against the Cardassian Union for the best interest of the Alpha Quadrant. It was revealed in this episode that relations between the two great powers had been, for the most part, amicable, save for the Betreka Nebula Incident, which began an eighteen-year-long conflict between the two powers. In , Captain Benjamin Sisko and Martok discussed a Dominion retaliation, saying that it would be not only against the Federation but also against the Klingons and the entire Alpha Quadrant. In , Sisko said to Romulan Senator Vreenak that, if Cardassia, the Klingon Empire and the Federation were all conquered by the Dominion, the Romulans would find their territory surrounded by a single enemy. In , Sisko stated that the three great powers, the Humans, the Klingons, and the Romulans, had one goal: to drive the Dominion out of the Alpha Quadrant. In , Chancellor Gowron envisioned the Klingon Empire as the saviors of the Alpha Quadrant, if they could drive the Dominion out of the quadrant. The association between Qo'noS and the Alpha Quadrant was carried over to Star Trek: Voyager, as well. In , Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres boasted that Klingon females were renowned in the Alpha Quadrant for their physical prowess and voracious sexual appetites. In , Captain Kathryn Janeway reminisced about what it would be like to live in Captain James T. Kirk's era, with the Alpha Quadrant still largely unexplored and Humans on the verge of war with the Klingons. In , Chakotay identified the Klingon bat'leth as an Alpha Quadrant weapon. The close proximity of Qo'noS and Earth was established in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Qo'noS was located only four days away for a starship traveling at warp 4.5. established that this was at most only 90 light years away, as that was the farthest away from Earth any Human had ever gone up to that point. In , the close proximity was further confirmed as faster starships could easily reach the planet from the Sol system and return within a day. Reference works that predate Star Trek: The Next Generation depict the location of the Klingon Empire and their homeworld in what has been established as the Alpha Quadrant. These include such works as the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual (T0:02:07:00) and Star Trek Maps (Chart A). More recent reference works have, however, moved the Klingon Empire into the Beta Quadrant. They show that the Empire borders only the Romulan Star Empire and the United Federation of Planets. Despite the conflicting canonical references establishing the Ferengi and the Cardassians as neighbors of the Empire, they are depicted on the other side of the Federation, away from the Klingons in these graphics. Only one of these graphics depicting the Klingons in the Beta Quadrant has made a brief on-screen appearance, as a display graphic on a PADD in . http://startrekpropcollector.com/trekauctions/items/6746 http://startrekpropcollector.com/trekauctions/images/ae990050495ed308f2dddf80cbe72bdc The information on the PADD, though, was completely illegible on screen. http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=529&page=3 External link * ca:Kronos cs:Qo'noS de:Qo'noS es:Qo'noS fr:Qo'noS ja:クロノス nl:Qo'noS ru:Кронос Category:Planets Qo'noS Category:Klingonese